


skies blinking at me

by badass_normal



Category: Prison Break
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-18
Updated: 2009-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-11 01:13:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badass_normal/pseuds/badass_normal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most importantly, they're both liars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	skies blinking at me

_I see a storm bubbling up from the sea  
and it's coming closer_

He knew what she had been up to the moment she slammed the door to their suite. Because she never wore skirts to meet with the General unless she needed to.

So that itself was enough to put him in a bad mood.

“Did you get it?” he asked darkly as she removed her shoes and lost about four inches in the process.

She walked to the table where he had put down his glass upon her entrance and slapped the envelope onto it. “That’s fifty million right there. But that’s all we’re getting. It wasn’t easy to convince him to give up this much, even though I promised the check would never be cashed.”

James looked pointedly at her exposed legs, then back to her face. “Really,” he deadpanned, keeping the disgust from his voice.

She blinked at him somewhat incredulously. “We all have our jobs. We’ve already established that I do the dirty work.”

“I’m sure you enjoy it enough,” he said with a bit of a sneer.

“Oh yes,” she snapped back, heading to their temporary liquor cabinet and pouring herself a drink as she spoke. “I don’t know what gets me hotter, the fact that he’s older than my father, or that he threatens me with torture pretty much every other time we meet.” She turned around and leaned back against the counter, cradling the glass within her flawless manicure, extending her little finger as she sipped in an exaggerated, inappropriate pose of obsolete etiquette.

“We both know that he doesn’t have the stomach to hurt you,” he said coldly, and he could actually feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end in preparation for an impending conflict.

“I don’t know what intel you’re operating on, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have any scruples about leaving me in the middle of a goddamn wolf-pack with raw meat tied to the insides of my thighs.”

He took a moment to fold his hands on the table in front of him, to directly steer his gaze onto hers. “So…you’re fucking him why, then? You’re actually nothing more than a gold-digger? Or a megalomaniac?”

“If I didn’t fuck him, we wouldn’t have that,” she gestured to the envelope by his fingers. “And it really doesn’t concern you at all.” She set down her drink, slightly wrinkling her nose. Gretchen was perhaps the pickiest piece of ex-white trash he had ever met.

“Well you seem to be very intimately involved with everything and everyone in my life.”

She raised an eyebrow for a moment, apparently trying to pinpoint the reason for the aggression in his voice. He saw her nod when she figured it out. “Oh, so this is about Sofia, then?” Her smirk, not quite a smile because it was far too acidic to resemble any expression of mirth. “You know what? I’ll find you another sexy little girl to worship your cock. They’re hardly in short supply in LA.”

His fists balled of their own accord, just short of drawing blood on his palms. “I suppose I shouldn’t bother trying to explain to you that it’s not all about finding someone to fuck?”

“I don’t know, James. Do you think it’s a worthwhile use of your time to teach me all about why Sofia is so irreplaceable? Because to be honest, she didn’t seem like anything special to me.” She paused for a moment, creasing her eyebrows in thought. “I guess she must have been though, given that both you and Burrows seem to think with your cocks when it comes to her.”

“Right. Burrows. Another one of your brilliant ideas.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said lightly, innocently, turning from him and retreating to her bedroom. A toss of her hair and a pointed sway to her hips, a whore playing dumb.

He followed her, which was admittedly not the brightest idea he’d ever had, because it would have been less self-destructive in the end to just Let It Go. But Gretchen had a way of bringing out the masochist in him. And she knew it, and she loved it.

Storming into the room right on her heels, he slammed the door shut behind him. “Did Lincoln Burrows run off with my girlfriend?”

She shrugged, lazy half-smile lifting one of her cheeks. “I wouldn’t know.”

An unintentional hiss slithered from between his teeth. “I think you do. I think you even had something to do with it.” He could hear the dangerous rage mounting in his voice, and fought to swallow it. His temper had always gotten him into trouble.

“Why the hell would I care who or what your girlfriend’s doing?” She dropped her purse on the bed, and looked like she might want to follow it.

“You tell me,” he retorted.

She finally met his eyes, and all hint of playful, irritating teasing evaporated with a single blink. “I think it’s normal for a woman to get defensive when the father of her child has gone moon-eyed over a piece of fluff who’d blow away in a strong breeze.”

But there was really no way to control the anger once she went there. “Oh, don’t you dare pull that on me. She’s my daughter when it suits your argument, but otherwise I’m not even allowed to mention her, right?” Suddenly, somehow, he was no more than a foot from her face, and he was shouting. “For her safety, Gretchen? Or for yours? Is it just easier to pretend that Emily,” and she flinched and he inwardly triumphed, “is the product of a nasty union that you can blame on ambition?” His fingers closed around her shoulder, and she attempted to jerk her arm away, but he was stronger than her. “That breaking me out of Sona was just a job? Really? When I had been locked up for another woman?”

Without warning, her fist slammed into his cheek, and goddammit, after eight years he really should have been able to remember that she was left-handed. He released her and staggered back, hand flying to his aching cheekbone. She stepped after him, shoving him into the wall and speaking harshly in his face.

“I lost you your fucking girlfriend?” she snarled, hands pressed to his biceps and body holding him against the wall. Through the haze, he noted that she had steered the subject away from their daughter. Nothing new there. “Like your whole relationship wasn’t one big lie? She thought you were a fisherman, for fuck’s sake!” She laughed scathingly. “How long was that going to last, huh? You’d let her know a couple years from now that oh, by the way, you’re actually an agent who kills people? God, even our relationship had some honesty to it.”

“There’s no pressure to be a decent human being around you,” he responded angrily. “You’d spread your legs for the scum of the earth, and we both know it.”

She released him then, dropping down, exhaling, slightly shaking her head. “Well I can admit that I’ll never be anything better or worse,” she said, a little more quietly. “I’m not the one pretending that I can raise a kid or cook family dinners or ride off into the sunset, redeemed by the love of an adoring young boyfriend who doesn’t know what I am.” This time, her laugh was angry, bitter. She had reached a judgment of him, was more than ready to offer her verdict, because whether she was qualified or not, that was just what she did. “That was it, then? Redemption? Take your half of the Company’s reward money and move your conduit of innocence, your little fucking angel, into retirement on some beautiful island?” It was her turn to shout, the heat of her breath washing over his face. “Tucked away where Gary Miller and Roger McFadden and all your other aliases can’t find you?”

…Her voice so sure she knew him better than he knew himself, and he snapped. Broke free. Grasped blindly at her throat. Flipped, turned. Slammed her into the wall next to him, except it wasn’t a wall, it was the floor length mirror, and it shattered. Exploded. A fountain of broken glass.

“If that’s what I am, this murderer, this ruthless operative, then you’re in deep fucking trouble now, aren’t you?” He shoved harder. Pinned her to the glass by her neck. She was trying to breathe, her failed gasps dying in her throat under his palms. Limbs desperately struggling to throw him off. His thumbs found the hollow of her throat. Pressed lightly. Her eyes widened even more in panic. “What if this is it?” he growled. So appropriate. He could kill her. End her misery. And his, of course.

Until her knee smashed into his ribs violently, and he jumped away in shock and pain.

She sagged against the mirror frame, choking, clutching at her own neck. Her hand came away bloody, and he realized that the glass from the mirror had cut into her skin. Her eyes were wide, confused, yet actually glaring at him through strands of hair. It was that curious paradoxical blend of aloof, powerful, and vulnerable that he had never seen on any other person. Hurt, murderous, frightened, all at once. Cornered prey. Yet a dangerously wounded animal.

Although maybe it wasn’t too unusual, he thought, as he was gripped by what he was pretty sure were a matching set of conflicting emotions. An inch from killing her, an inch from running for the door, an inch from bursting into tears. And he could probably do all three at once.

In other words, nothing had fucking changed. Two and a half years (twenty nine months and twelve days) without laying a hand on her, and now he was like a recovering alcoholic with his favorite drink in his palm, and it was blinking at him with pale eyes, bleeding and hot and guaranteed to never quench the violent cravings it inevitably ignited.

Her eyes flickered downwards for a nanosecond, because that was another one of Gretchen’s talents, figuring out a guy was turned on before even he noticed, but he knew. Of course he knew. This was how it worked, after all. The fall from the high horse. The plunge back into Hurricane Gretchen, a storm that was once again consuming his life, destroying all the collateral that lay in Its path.

Why the hell not?

\--

He always reminded her of a predatory feline when he was horny. Almost to the point where it bordered on porn cliché, or something, but never quite getting there. He wasn’t a huge lion or anything, more like a slender, deadly cheetah.

Either way, there was a fierce, angry animal in James Whistler’s blood that every now and then got control of his body, and gave him the physical strength and the ruthlessness to slaughter strangers in bars. And she could still feel Its fingers bruising her throat, even as the man himself stood panting a few feet in front of her. The crisscrossed lines between rage and lust and agony disintegrating in the space between them. The lack of space, really.

This time, his hands nailed her waist to the broken mirror. Her back once again ripped open through her shirt. His mouth claimed hers, his tongue parting her lips. She slammed her hips forward. Gasped at the raging hard-on digging violently into her pelvis. He snatched the hem of her shirt. Tugged it over her head. Pushed her back again, lifting her off the floor. So he could easily dip his head to get his tongue around her nipple. His hand grabbed viciously at her other breast. Her body responded. Somewhere her clit throbbed with arousal. If she was already at this point, she couldn’t even begin to comprehend what would happen once he was inside of her.

He totally lost control then, pulling away and taking her with him. Before she knew what was happening, he had thrown her onto the floor, onto the broken glass from the mirror. Followed. Smothered her beneath him. Her skin burned as his hands glided over her body before reaching her skirt. She felt him take the fabric and tear it up the center for easier access. The violence of the act went straight to her core and a flood of arousal drenched the insides of her thighs. Just as his fingers reached beneath her underwear.

“God, you’re wet,” he groaned. “And hot. And—fuck.” He ground against her to make sure she knew that he was going to fuck her blind and brainless. Or he just couldn’t help it.

She let him have his subliminal ego trip over what he could do to her body, before once again threading her fingers into his hair and forcing him to meet her eyes. “Yeah? And?”

Then he ripped off her underwear as well, and the part of her brain that hadn’t already been clouded in obliviating lust winced at the waste of even more nice clothing. But his voice spoke again. And she could never, ever have ignored it. “Do you think about me, then? Miss what I can do to you?” He sounded desperate, at the end of his rope. There was a clanking of metal as his undid his belt.

“All the—fucking—time,” she managed. She spread her legs beneath him. Needed him. “Now—shut up and—fuck me.”

He didn’t bother answering, for once, and drove his cock into her furiously. To her shock, he cried out. Grabbed onto her for a moment and refused to move. Breathed against her neck. She wondered if he was attempting to prevent himself from coming prematurely.

Whatever the cause for alarm, it was suddenly no longer a problem. Because a few seconds later, he planted his hands on either side of her head, lifted himself up, and slammed her onto the floor. A tight whiplash of heat uncurled from her loins through her entire body with just the one movement, even as she felt the broken shards of the mirror drive into her skin.

He fucked her. It hurt. But that was probably what made it…what it was. A brutal assault on her cunt and her body. Her fingers involuntarily gripped at the carpet. Glass sliced open her palms, her forearms. He somehow kept up his thrusting into her as he balanced on one hand, using the other to tangle in her hair. Tugged it. Hard. Exposed her neck to his greedy, sadistic teeth. His thrusts slow and thorough. Calculated to maximize the physical ecstasy spiraling from her clit. Reaching so deeply inside her, she would never get him out. For her part, she impaled herself on his cock. The movements purely instinctive, because her mind had beyond shut down.

Most of the rest was a blank. A piercing, white heat. Sounds of erotic agony wrecking her throat. Defined muscles crushing her breasts. Building to a point of sensation so intense, so good, that she was afraid. If it was possible to die—what a way to die—like this.

She dissolved. Came. Sobbed. Was dragged into an undertow, tidal wave, riptide, of boiling blood. He exploded within her. Coming so hard she could actually feel every muscle in his body tense and scream its possessive, angry, territorial climax.

Her pulse still raced as he managed to roll off of her, clearly not caring about the sharp glass on the floor. For a moment, she gulped for her breath, not unlike when he had released her throat a short while ago. Before this violent climax of a slowly burning resentment and unresolved…feelings? God, anything but that.

Then he reached for her hand, her bleeding hand, pressing the wet scarlet-streaked palm to his mouth. He was kissing her, trailing his lips up her wounded forearm. Jesus Christ.

“Stop,” she snapped, without much conviction. He reached the crook of her elbow, and an unwelcome pleasant tingling scattered across her skin.

“No,” he returned, his lips moving softly. “You don’t want me to.”

…His voice so sure he knew her better than she knew herself, and she snapped. Surrendered. Leaned her head back and let him gently make love to her with his mouth. It was a different kind of elation. And she had never hated him more. Had never—no, she wasn’t going there. She didn’t. Didn’t. Because nobody broke her heart. She was better than that.

\--

They had been silent for awhile, as he examined her bare back and pulled out the occasional tiny piece of glass that had embedded itself in her skin. He wondered what she expected next. Usually, he would have had no trouble predicting, because she was not nearly as capable of shutting him out as she thought she was, but there was a reason he was not looking at her face now. Because he wondered, but he didn’t want to know.

“I’m not forgiving you,” he finally said, cutting through whatever stiff introspection they were both suffering.

“For what?”

“Sofia.”

The name hung in the air. Maybe a slap to her face, maybe just his way of saying calmly that he didn’t need her. Of course to Gretchen it might not have meant anything, bringing up the name of another woman after their own encounter on the floor. But he thought here that it might.

“If you say so.”

He didn’t turn her around, merely rested his mouth on the side of her neck again, kind of tenderly. “You know, I used to love you,” he said against her skin. Because those words, whether their nature or simply the use of the past tense, had a much better chance of getting under her skin than did the shards of a broken mirror.

“People like us don’t fall in love,” she said flatly. “And definitely not with each other.”

“If you say so,” he echoed. He certainly hadn't expected her to tell him the same. It would hurt her too much.

“People like us fuck and occasionally get knocked up, or do the knocking up,” she continued in that same disaffected tone. “All that other shit is just—”

“Beneath us?” He got to his feet, winced as more broken glass crunched under his shoes. “Even if you’re right about us, you’re wrong about me. Sofia—”

“Right. Fucking Sofia. The brave and exciting and intoxicating.”

“She put up with you torturing her.”

Finally, she also got to her feet, facing him. “Now she’ll have a cute little burn-scar on her neck. You know, I got tortured in the process of breaking you out as well.”

They stared at each other silently for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he acknowledged.

“I don’t really care anymore.” She tiptoed over to the door, skirt torn, completely shirtless, and opened it. She gestured with her hand, dismissing him.

“As long as Sofia’s gone, right?”

“Just go.”

He could have tried harder to break her down. Emily was the strongest weapon in his arsenal, and he had only briefly touched on that subject. He wanted to remind her that he was more than ready seven years ago. That for five minutes he had rejoiced at the prospect of being a father, until she had told him plainly that she planned on passing their child off as the General’s, so It would never be used against her should she fall from the Company’s good graces. Sometimes, he was pretty sure she forgot all about that. That she had killed him, and Sofia had been the beginning of his new life without Gretchen.

But he didn’t. Try. Because really, he needed to be done with her. A few weeks later, he and Alex wouldn’t need her anymore, and they could leave her to whatever fate she felt like suffering. Until then, they could coexist, but he was done trying to make sense of her, done trying to…defeat her? No, that wasn’t right. He wasn’t actually sure what the he and Gretchen had been up to for so long, but he didn’t think it was a competition of any kind. At any rate, he had briefly relapsed, but that had to be it. A quick spectacular closure fuck on a shattered mirror. Hopefully not the prelude to a binge.

As he made his way to the door, over the glass, he watched as it sparkled in the light, the bigger shards reflecting him in countless tiny frames. He wasn’t particularly superstitious, but he felt a bit dazzled by the image nonetheless.

He left her to clean up the mess. The next seven years couldn’t possibly be worse for them than the preceding.

_ Driven by the strangle of vein  
Showing no mercy I’d do it again  
Open up your eyes  
You keep on crying  
Baby I’ll bleed you dry... _


End file.
